Thomas J. Kniesner was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and received his Ph.D. degree in economics from The Ohio State University. Currently he is the Krisher Professor of Economics Emeritus at Syracuse University. During 2002–2006 he served as the chair of the Department of Economics at Syracuse University. In 2013 he joined the faculty of Claremont Graduate University as Special Assistant to the President and University Professor.

Dr. Kniesner’s specialty is the econometric examination of labor and health economic issues. His interests are labor supply, workplace safety, and health care costs and use. He has published articles in over 20 different professional journals including The American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Labour Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law, Health Affairs, The Economics of Neuroscience, and Regulation. He is the co-author of seven books, including Labor Economics: Theory, Evidence, and Policy, Simulating Workplace Safety Policy, The Law and Economics of Workers’ Compensation Insurance, and The Effects of Recent Tax Reforms on Labor Supply. He is currently Co-Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, Co-Editor of Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.

Before coming to Syracuse University Dr. Kniesner was on the faculty of Indiana University’s Department of Economics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Economics and Duke University’s Institute for Policy Studies. Dr. Kniesner has also served as the Senior Labor Economist on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has lived in Japan where he was Visiting Scholar at Keio University, in Australia where he was Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Department of Statistics of the Faculties and Department of Economics of the Research School of the Social Sciences, and in the Netherlands where he was visiting Scholar at the CentER for Economic Research of Tilburg University. More recently, Dr. Kniesner has been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace and University College London, a Visiting Research Fellow in the Division of Health Services and Policy Research of Eli Lilly and Company, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis. During Spring 2001 he was a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Dr. Kniesner is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has received the University of Mississippi’s Otho Smith Medallion for service to the economics profession, and his biography has appeared in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Men of Achievement, Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, Who’s Who in the Midwest, Who’s Who in American Education, and Who’s Who of Emerging Leaders in America. In 2004 he was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2007.